Software Free

Novell appears to be (sort of) advertising Windows Vista at the very top of its monthly newsletter.

Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft’s attempt to ‘consume’ ODF. Joining the skepticism now is the man behind the open source definition and a vocal critic of Novell’s deal with Microsoft. Bruce Perens does not trust Microsoft, either. He explains why.

Over the past few years, demand for APIs into web-hosted services has increased enormously. Fewer and fewer big, web-based companies can resist the market imperative to provide API access into the services they offer. The number of APIs tracked by Programmable Web—from companies large and small—continues to grow.

Here are some stats to chew on, direct from the eBay Dev Con keynotes on Monday:

I still love the work of my old comrades at SUSE, Novell and in the openSUSE community. openSUSE 10.3 was by far the most polished and solid SUSE Linux that I have ever used, and though distro preferences are often much like personal tastes, I still have to say that to me, SUSE makes the most user-friendly distro I have used.

openSUSE version 11.0 comes out on June 19, just a couple days from now, and I am eagerly anticipating its release. A bunch of people I know and admire, some of them good friends, worked long and hard to make it happen. Congratulations to the team for your perseverence, dedication, and contributions.

Supercomputers around the world are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. According to TOP500, a project that tracks and detects trends in high-performance computing, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the Linux of choice on the world's largest HPC supercomputers today.

read more

Novell has filed its Response to Debtors' Second Motion to Extend Exclusivity [PDF], and you could sum up its message to the court like this: Enough already, but if you do grant another extension, please let it be the last. SCO's position is that it can't file a plan until Utah reaches a decision on how much SCO owes Novell. Oh really?

Ladies and gentlemen, sit down. You have all been taken advantage of in the worst manipulative mental carnival imagineable.

FUD. We all know the term. Wikipedia states it as: "Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing, public relations, and illiberal democracies.

I thought it would be fun to look at Chris Sontag's testimony as a whole, instead of just covering the SCO v. Novell trial according to the particular day. Sontag was called by Novell on the first day, April 29, 2008. They didn't finish so he was back on the stand on the 30th, so I've cobbled together the relevant sections from the two day's transcripts to show you the complete performance.

OpenSUSE's new EULA contains some alarming bits.

Pro-Novell deception in the press and in blogs. "[Matt Asay] now comes out (yes, once more) to defend Novell’s latest FUD attack on Red Hat. "

Fedora considers Moonlight to be too much of a risk to Fedora

There are some hurdles to jump if you wish to make use of Novell's so-called Silverlight support (Microsoft's excuse, bogus cross platform)

Another very interesting interpretation which shows why Novell and Mono are enemies to Free software.

An analysis with a top lawyer suggests that Moonlight is to be avoided

I noticed a comment thread on Groklaw about Moonlight, with a link to the license terms on Microsoft's website. They call it Covenant to Downstream Recipients of Moonlight - Microsoft & Novell Interoperability Collaboration . A comment by Microsoft's Brian Goldfarb on Dana Blankenhorn's article about Novell being a lead pony for Silverlight started the discussion originally.

read more